Figments
by Pantz
Summary: “Do you think your parents ever did this when they were at Hogwarts?” She asks as the Spring sun filters through her eyelashes and into her eyes.
1. Chapter 1

_Figments_

"It's raining outside," He says from behind her in a voice just above a whisper. She sees his face in the glare of the window as the raindrops fall down the damp glass. Her green eyes meet his in the window, her right hand slowly moves to the cold glass in front of her and she whispers that she knows.

"It has been all day." A slow tear falls from her left eye and trails its way down her cheek.

He stares at the slight curl of her hair and as much of her as he can see in the wet glass. The rain trails down the image of her face as if she were crying the very tears of life. Her face has never looked more lost.

"Can you even look at me?" Her shoulders stiffen and her hand falls away from its place at the window and she closes her eyes.

"I'm afraid." It's that one statement alone that breaks any sense of pretending inside each of them.

He's never known her to be afraid of anything.

He takes a step closer, reaches out slightly before allowing his hand to fall back to his side. His hesitation has been the death of them before.

But maybe that's the fear of love.

"Of what?" he chokes out as lightening flashes outside. She flinches, but only so that he is the only person who can notice.

And silence, no words, just the feeling of fear that has ripped its way into her heart. She no longer knows, no longer understands that idyllic world she once spoke of with glitter flashing in her eyes.

She can close her eyes and see a phantom of a dream, but she can no longer reach out and touch it.

More tears fall and she looks to the ground. Slowly, she turns to face him as a sob leaves her lips. And he's still as beautiful as she remembers him.

"Of you. Your eyes." He takes a step towards her, hesitant, as hesitant as he was days before when he broke what was left of her heart, and he cups her cheek.

"Lily… I…" She looks into his hazel eyes, so hopeful, but turns away at his voice. She has faced her fears in a matter of seconds and was met with the worst of realities.

Because whoever that boy was that once liked her, this man could never be him. He would never throw himself head long into a passionate love when he knows she can not put her whole heart in it.

And she can't, not with all the death that has been torturing her.

He isn't as he was before, when he felt immune to the pain of heartbreak. To know that the emptiness in her eyes could never alleviate at the sight of him, to know that his love could never fully save her, it would be the death of him.

And that dream that she had put her hopes on, of that young fifteen year old boy who used to chase her, is gone.

It's dead. That boy is grown, a figment of her own imagination as much as that girl he once chased has faded away. They're gone.

And all that's left is two poor children growing up in the broken times of a war. Two children who possibly need each other more then each could ever realize.

"Please James, don't. I'm… I just… Sometimes, I think that if you just love me everything will turn out okay."

Gently, he grabs her hand and intertwines his fingers with hers. "And then what happens," he asks.

"I wake up," She says as she turns back towards the window, her fingers slowly slipping through his until his grasp is completely gone.

And there's nothing left for him to do but walk away.

End

A/N: Everything from HP Books belongs to JK Rowling


	2. Chapter 2

A month ago, maybe a bit more, the head of her house came to her and told her that her parents were lost. _Lost_, the teacher had said as if, as if there was a chance that her parents could be found like lost keys and the favorite shirt that disappears right when you need it. She looked at her teacher with tears in her eyes and with her last ounce of childish security making her blind to the truth she had already absorbed, she whispered that she didn't understand.

"_They're gone, sweetheart, dead. Your parents have gone to a better place." _The teacher said all this and the only thing she could do was stare at her fingers and repeat the words.

"_Dead?"_ she had begged. She knew, from that moment on, that all was lost. And she couldn't even cry with that realization.

She had walked back to the common room on autopilot. Friends were ignored in the hallway, any sense of knowing was gone, and when she walked into the common room he was the first thing she was able to see.

She held the whisper of his name on her lips for always_, "James."_ Too afraid to speak it out loud. Too afraid too do anything but look into his hazel eyes and beg to know. _"Dead?"_ she had said.

His fingers went through her hair, her body leaned on him for strength, and as they slowly fell to the floor she still had not cried a single tear. _Not one_.

The rest happened as if it were written in stone. He had loved her before. She finally fell for him. It could have been a fairytale if it weren't for the war, the death, and the pain of life no person could escape.

"Do you see the dog?" Her fingers point to the sky as she rests back on her pillow of grass.

"Where?"

"Right there. Next to the wand and a little behind the one that sort of looks like Sirius."

He laughs, "Oh, _that_ dog."

She turns on the ground so that she is facing him. A small smile plays on her lips and he looks at her.

"Do you love me, James?" She has had the habit since her parents died of being blunt with most of her thoughts. She no longer likes to veil her feelings in pretty euphemisms. She knows longer sees the point because she could look away for a moment, a single moment, and he could be gone by the time she looks back.

He looks away from her and back to the sky. She props her head up on her hand waiting expectantly for his answer.

"You know that was never the problem." He says his eyes still above. She moves her hands to the ground and slowly moves closer to him. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him.

Her eyes slowly open again, his fingers rub her cheek, and he leans in a kisses her softly, quickly.

"You know I have always loved you," he tells her as they both sit up.

She sits up in the grass, looking down at her lap.

"Lily," he says. "Lily, look at me."

She looks up with teary eyes. "I just don't understand anymore. I thought I did, but I don't anymore."

"Understand what?" He asks.

"How can you assume that I don't love you enough?"

A breeze moves by. Her hair falls into her face, but she still looks at him with questioning eyes.

Sometimes you just have to let go, fall head first into love no matter what the consequences could be.

And that's what she did. What, despite all the bravery and courage he's supposed to have, he couldn't do himself.

"Lily," he began, but she cut him off.

"I know James," she says between tears, "but what was true for a week ago is merely your imagination now. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not… with you." Her eyes close and tears fall down her face. She feels his rough fingers on her face as he wipes her tears away.

"What do you think would have happened if there was never a war?"

She opens her eyes, runs a hand through his hair and musters up something that should have been a smile.

"I would never have loved you," she says.

He takes a lock of her hair in his hand and twists it around his finger.

"Come here," he says with his face only inches away from her own.

"I love you, James." She whispers as she kisses him.

"I love you, too."

And there was still a war. Tomorrow, she'll wake up and her parents will still be dead. In a week, he'll look into her eyes and wish they sparkled like they used to.

In a month, the innocent will still be dying and the brave will still be waiting to fight.

But at least now, at the time it matters most, they were able to find each other amongst all the pain.

_And life begins to hurt a little less._


	3. Chapter 3

Last night, she slept with him for the first time. She closed her eyes while he was on top of her and dreamt they were lying on a sandy beach with fire works in the sky and the slight hum of the wind singing in her ear. She could almost hear the sound of the ocean as the waves rushed to and from the bank.

Then she opened her eyes, looked into his flushed face and smiled despite the fact that she was lying in a dormitory with his roommates surrounding them.

She had said it before. The first time was a few days after her parents died. She looked at him with broken eyes and a hesitant smile and said those words because she just needed him. Two weeks later, she said it to him again as a last resort. It was her reason, her justification for him to just let it go and love her. She said it as an ultimatum.

But last night, she looked into his hazel eyes and meant it completely for the first time. _I love you_. And despite being a witch, despite feeling hopeless and empty just days before, she has never felt anything more magical then the moment when she knew she truly loved James.

"Are you afraid?" She asks him as she stares at the movement of his jaw beneath his skin. He fingers her legs she had draped over his lap and nods.

"I think we all are a little bit." She looks away for a moment to the fire burning in front of them.

"Sirius says he finally got that flat in London." She whispers. He looks at her, the crease of her eyebrows, the slight downward tug of her mouth, and moves her face so that she's looking at him.

"What's wrong?" he asks. She looks down for a moment.

"Nothing…nothing. It's just… everything is about to change, isn't it?" He smiles slightly.

"That's what happens." She nods but doesn't say another word. Silence fills the empty spaces between them and she allows her eyes to drift to his face again. She swallows down her fears and when he looks at her again, she is able to smile sweetly.

"Lily, what would you do if I told you that I had to go away right now?" She looks at him, frowning again.

"I… I would say goodbye," she answers him truthfully not daring to look at him once. Instead, she stares at the fire and he can see the flames dancing in her eyes.

"You wouldn't come with me? You wouldn't say to hell with school and to hell with the war and bloody hell to all the death and just come with me?"

She swallows hard. "I'm seventeen, James. I want to say I would follow you to the end of the world, but we both know I'm too scared that I'd fall off the edge."

He stays silent for a moment. "Weren't you the one who taught me that falling was half the battle?"

"It's not the fall I'm afraid of." She moves her legs so she is sitting Indian style and rests her back on the edge of the coffee table. "It's what happens after I'm lying on the ground."

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'll still love you. You'll still love me. Only it'll be without all that other stuff."

"All that other stuff is who you are and people who love you, James. I wouldn't know you without all that other stuff."

"It's the war." He answers.

She looks away from him for a moment. "There will always be a war, James…"

"And there will always be death." They stay silent for a moment. She looks at him staring at the fire, the glow of the flames on his cheek and the slight smile begging to tug at his lips, and her heart hurts. She has seen the boy slowly mature in the wake of a war. She realizes, suddenly, that she wants to be there to see the man he becomes when the war is over.

She wants to be there for it all.

"I… I changed my mind."

"Oh did you?" he says raising his eyebrows.

"Yes, where do you want me to go?"

He smiles allowing a small chuckle to escape his lips.

"Right now?" he says with that marauder glint in his eyes. "Right now I just want you to follow me to my dorm."

She laughs before shrugging her shoulders, "Why not?" And then she kisses him.


	4. Chapter 4

"My mother used to star gaze with me," She says looking back to him from her spot on the window's ledge. He smiles,

"What was she like?" She looks down and then out the window allowing her eyes travel down the hundreds of feet she would fall to the ground if by chance she fell.

As if James would let her.

"She was… she was everything." She says with a pained smile. "She… she had this light about her, you know? The type of brightness you don't see in every other person. She…" but she stops being able to speak.

"You don't have to tell me. I'm sorry." She looks at him with a slight shake of her head.

"Don't say that. I fell in love with you because you were the one person who refused to say that to me. You were the one person who seemed to understand that I don't give a bullocks if you're sorry."

"You know my parents died when I was ten years old," He said coming up behind her.

She nods, "I remember Sirius saying that. An accident, or something."

He takes a strand of her hair and twists it around his finger, "Yeah, something like that."

She looks down, "You don't have to say anything."

"What's there to say? There was a fire. They were sleeping."

"How did you get away?" He lets go over her hair and rubs his eyes under her glasses.

"I was at my grandmum's manor."

"My parents were murdered by wizard fanatics." She says looking down. It's the first time she has ever said it aloud.

"I figured."

"How?"

"Come on, Lily. These days, no one dies as an accident." She jumps off the ledge and slides down the wall of the tower.

"Hold me," she says in a small voice. He smiles as he puts his arms around her.

"I heard you hung out with Remus yesterday at Hogsmeade."

"Oh yes, we went to the bookstore, then for some butterbeer, and then we made out by the shrieking shack."

"That's where Remus takes all the girls. I never took you to be one of his slags." She elbows him in the stomach.

"Don't be a prat because you're jealous. It's not my fault you had a detention."

"No, that would be Sirius' fault." She laughs.

"Oh right, Sirius_ made_ you charm McGonagall's hair blue and then _made_ you give Slughorn that sleeping potion because _he's_ the one who wanted to fly instead of double potions."

"What can I say about the boy? You try and try to raise them right and still can't help the way they turn out." She rolls her eyes.

"You are such a bastard." She says playing with his fingers. "You don't even realize it, do you?" she says as his chin comes to rest on her shoulder.

"Realize what?"

"How much he looks up to you? No matter how strong and cocky Sirius pretends to be I can see how much the kid bloody worships you."

"He does not…"

"_Yes_, he does, James. He'll need you more then anyone in a week."

"Even more than you?" A smile crosses her lips.

"Never more than me."

"I love you, Lil, you know that, right?"

"I know, but…"

"What?"

"It doesn't stop me from being afraid. I don't want to graduate, James. I don't ever want to leave."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know where I'm going." He lightly places his lips on her cheek.

"No one does, that's the beauty of it."

"Have…" her eyes close, "have you heard back from the aurors?" She asks in a voice slowly fading down to a whisper."

"I… Lily, we spoke about this." He says as his arms tighten around her waist.

"I know, just say it to me again. I just want to hear it one more time."

He smiles against her hair, "Nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing."

A single tear leaks out of her eye. "I don't want you to be an auror, James."

"And I don't want you to move in with Marlene, but you still are."

The thing is, as much as she once hated it, when she's brings herself down to a level of pain, his arrogance and general rudeness is the one thing that can make her smile again.

"Oh, and what should I do? Move in with you?"

"You know, I have suggested that exact scenario."

"James, I can't move in with you. God, what would my parents… say?" She looks down at their intertwined hands again.

"I think they would say 'Wow Lily, what a dashing boy you have here? How perfect. How wonderful. Marry him and just go away.'" She laughs.

"You have obviously never spoken a word to them before. They would never call you dashing. They would take one look at your hair and think I'm dating a vagabond."

"Yes, and who's fault is that? While they were alive I was Potter and you couldn't even bring yourself to smile at me, let alone introduce me to mum and dad."

Her smile falls away and she looks at him. "Can I tell you I'm sorry?"

"For what?"

"For when I was fifteen and said you were nothing. You are _everything_."

He kisses her. Slowly, they fall to the floor and outside the tower's window the moon rises amongst the stars.


	5. Chapter 5

"How do I look?" she says smiling as she twirls in front of his bed.

"Beautiful. Just like… like every other seventh year in this school." She stops moving.

"You are such a prat." She says as her cap falls off her head. He laughs,

"What would you like me to say? You're wearing graduation robes. The exact robes every other seventh year is wearing."

"Graduation robes? Wow, this is real, right? This is really happening."

"Yup, the happiest day of our young lives thus far. How does it feel?" She looks at him and then slowly turns to pick up her cap from the floor behind her. She fingers the tallis as she looks at him.

"I feel horrible, James. I feel as if… as if this isn't how it was supposed to happen." A small tear falls from her eyes that she quickly wipes away.

"Come here," he says and she crawls unto the bed and into his arms. "I know they meant the world to you. I know them not being here is nearly killing you. I know it's a poor substitute for them, but you have me, Lily. I'll be your family now."

"James, you have no idea how much that means."

"You mean I'll do," he asks after quickly kissing the back of her head.

"You'll more then do." She whispers as she feels his arms go around her.

"Lily… I… I have to tell you something."

"What?" He sucks in a breath.

"I heard back from the Ministry. I start training in a month."

Her smile falls away and for a second she forgets to breathe.

"Okay," she answers in a small voice.

"I… I just wanted to tell you. That you of all people should know." She doesn't answer him for a moment.

"You know, I never thought my life would turn out like this." She says, allowing the matter to lie for now.

"What do you mean?"

"It's just… When I was younger I thought I'd cure cancer or be the first human to defy gravity and fly. When I was a kid, I wanted to discover the world." She says playing with his hand.

"What happened?"

"Well," she says smiling again, "One day I turned eleven and an owl flew into my window, which, to my great surprise, informed me that I was a witch."

"And that ruined all of your dreams?" He says twirling pieces of her hair around his fingers.

"No, no it just gave me new ones."

"Like what?"

"Like, the first time I ever held my wand in my hand. When I felt that power, I knew, I just knew that one day I'd help change the world."

"Just help? You aren't going to be a Hero of the Wizarding World?"

"I don't want fame, James. I just want something to believe in." She says snuggling deeper into his arms.

"And magic suffices?"

"Once upon a time it did."

"And then?"

She stays silent for a few moments.

"And then magic killed my parents," she whispers into the air as quietly as possible afraid of destroying the fragility of their moments together.

"Lily… Magic is like everything in life. It'll tear you apart, destroy the very things you love about yourself if you let its power poison you. Yet within its power, it gives life a beauty, a purpose that allows our very existence to survive."

"Spoken like a true pureblood," she says. "You'll never realize that magic isn't the only way to live life. Your entire being is too absorbed in it." He loosens his arms as she sits up to look at him.

"No, Lily. What you will never allow yourself to realize ever again, is the fact that even the simplest of moments, the plainest touch has more magic than my wand ever will. You used to be able to see that."

"I just… I lost something when my parents died. I feel like… like a part of me died with them."

He crawls a little forward on the bed and takes her face in his hands. He kisses her, slowly until the taste of salt on his lips made him pull away.

"Tell me you don't feel that?" He whispers.

"Feel what?"

"Magic when I kiss you?" He asks, his glasses galling down the ridge of his nose.

"James, you're the only thing in this world that makes me believe in anything anymore. You're… I can't even begin to tell you," she says in a weak, high pitched voice.

"Look at me, Lily." She glances up. "You're going to be okay. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I swear."

"You do make me happy, James. Sometimes, I'm so happy I feel guilty."

"Never feel guilty for being alive. You're parents would never have wanted that." She smiles,

"Nor would yours."

"Now, buck up and wipe your face. You look like shit."

She laughs as she wipes her nose, "You, James Potter, are an _amazing_ boyfriend." He smiles.

"I love you."

"I love you, too." She says as he leans in to kiss her. Their lips meet, she feels something of an explosion in her stomach, and the two children almost share a perfect moment.

"Hey, Lovebirds! We have a little thing called graduation to be getting to." A laughing smile and shaggy hair, James looks up and glares at his best friend.

"Bloody hell, Sirius, graduation can wait." And so he leans in to kiss her again.

_A/N: Hey, thanks to everyone who read this. I'm very, like, scared about it because it's a new style for me and I suck completely at dialogue and love in general. I appreciate all your feedback though. It's been amazing. I'm a bit afraid of this chapter too. So you have to review and make my fears go away._


	6. Chapter 6

_One Year Later…_

"Who is that?" She shakes her head at him.

"Please James, do not do this right now." Her voice lessens to a deathly whisper.

"Tell me who he is." His voice is calm, stable, but she shivers at the coldness, the anger buried underneath.

"You know exactly who he is. You know him, you've met him. You know I study for exams with him. I have been all year."

"Are you cheating on me?"

Neither could pinpoint that exact moment when everything started unraveling. Slowly, though, life began to take its toll on him. He had a vision in school about what the glamour of being an Auror would be like. He thought he would be living a dream.

But there is a war swarming around him. After training, after two months of learning how to make his wand deadly and then being thrown into the field, he realized the life is not what he thought it was. He stood there in a raid, watched one of his comrades get tortured and finally die begging for mercy, and he lost any sense of that goodness that once made him James Potter.

And no matter how much she loves him. No matter how much she tried to pull him back on solid ground when he fell through the deep end, she couldn't save him. Just like months before he couldn't save her.

She looks at him, angry. "Did you just say that to me? Did you really just say that to me?"

"Are you?"

"I'm not even going to answer that," She says and turns to walk away. He grabs her arm,

"Lily…"

"I don't even see why you care, James. I just don't understand you anymore." She says, not angry, just sad.

"What do you mean?"

"How long are you going to do this to yourself, James? How long are you going to go on letting the war control your life? How many more things are you going to loose before you realize that this person is not who you want to be?"

"I don't know. I don't know who I am anymore!" He screams, frustrated, not at her, but at that constant knotting in his stomach and the constant pain in her eyes reminding him of what he has lost.

"You're James Potter!" She yells. She can look at him and see that other James still. That James with light in his golden eyes and who looked at her as if she were his entire world. Somewhere inside him, she knows it's still there, that general brightness she has to believe can never die.

"Who is that? Who is that? I can't take it anymore, Lil. I can't take anything about this life anymore." She flinches,

"Anything," she chokes out trying to hold back tears. His pain has been killing her, tearing at her heart for months now.

"You know, I used to be able to look into your eyes and see the world."

"James, stop. You have to stop and think about what you're saying."

She's crying now, but he doesn't move to wipe her tears away.

"Look at me, Lily. Why would you want to be with me? I'm a bloody mess. I…" She cuts him off.

"Because I love you, James. That doesn't just go away in hard times. It's times like these when we need each other the most."

"No, Lily, you love a dream, not me. You love a person I don't know how to be anymore."

"You can't truly believe that."

He looks at her, tears of his own beginning to cloud his vision.

"You were right not to want me to be an auror, Lily. You were right." She moves closer to him, wipes his tears away as they begin to fall.

"Let me help you James. Let me try." He turns his head away.

"It's too late. You'll never have any idea how sorry I am." He says, still crying. She lets out a sob.

"Don't do this James. Don't walk away." He runs a hand through her hair.

"I have to. I have to figure my life out again."

She looks at him, into his eyes that have faded through despair. And she can't see it. She can't see his love for her. She takes a deep breath and wipes away some tears.

"James, one day you're going to wake up and realize that walking away from me was the biggest mistake of your life."

"Probably," he says, "but not today." And he turns and walks away. She falls to the floor, crying, not daring to look up. Not daring to watch as his form gets farther and farther away. She can't bear to look.

Yet, life will move forward. Tomorrow, he'll go to a bar for the first time and begin his slow spiral downward. Yet, he'll still fight in the war, and he'll still swallow through his pain and laugh with Sirius as they lounge around their flat. In a few weeks, he'll feel a void, feel that something important is missing from his life. A flash of green eyes and red hair will fill his mind for no longer then a second, and then he'll open his eyes, shake his head, and just keep moving forward.

Tomorrow, she'll wake up and laugh at herself in the mirror because she can't cry, not for him. She'll feel the emptiness of heartbreak poison her. She'll spend the next few months wondering how he is. She'll lie in her bed at night, lonely, wondering if he's finally okay. For a second in the mornings, her eyes will shift over to the mail to see if maybe his owl is on the window sill waiting with a letter, a proclamation of love. Yet, she'll swallow her pain, laugh out loud with Marlene and date a few fellow med students, and just keep moving forward.

And one day, they'll realize, rather painfully, that the meaning they have been looking for is no where to be found.

A/N: You knew some of it had to be angsty.


	7. Chapter 7

Lily had once thought that when the world ended, the impact would shatter you. Flames would shoot through the sky, the ground would open and swallow beauty whole and there would be nothing left, not a single soul to sadly look upon the tragedy and comment on the world as it had once been.

Its story would never live on.

When her world crumbled, the only thing that may have given her anguish away were the storms in her eyes. She still smiled, still laughed, yet left to her mind for a single moment and her thoughts would wander to her messy haired boy imaging how far he has fallen into the turmoil he created for himself. Her eyes would darken, the ends of her mouth fall slightly, and her companions would turn her way and ask her casually what was amiss. They would place a hand on her limp one and entreat her to answer with a look.

She allowed herself to muster up some sort of a smile and she would laugh their fears away. "Oh you know me. I'm always lost in some reverie or another," and they would turn away as she excused herself to the ladies room because even after two years, she still could not allow her friends to watch her crying over his broken memory.

And it is the memories which torture her to carry around. They sit heavy on her shoulder, a relentless companion reminding her of a time when his laugh filled the air and she rested in his arms knowing that life would be perfect forevermore. There is no escaping the remembrance. There is no freedom from it. She can only endure it.

Almost two years passed, and she has just past her twentieth birthday. The last time she felt the warmth of his breath on her skin she had been eighteen and laughing at him in the glory of their love. She had been eighteen and he became so broken and battered from life that he allowed himself to just die away.

She spent the two years after the break up trying not to sink in despair. She leaned on her parents, she leaned on Marlene, and they kept her head above ground when she felt as though she could not go on any longer. They kept her alive.

But James was never one to lean on any person for help. Always a leader, always so confident in himself, he never learned to bow his head and realize that he needed help. And when James fell, and he fell farther than any person could have anticipated, and he had to claw his way back to the surface.

"I'm not an aruror anymore."

She looks at him, "James, I…"

"You don't even have to answer that. I just… When I quit you were the first person I wanted to know."

"How, James? It's been almost two years."

"When has time ever meant anything?"

James Potter, even at his lowest point of hiding out in the most grungy of bars, has always been articulate.

"I just don't know why you're here."

"We'll I should think that would be obvious." She waits.

"I came to you because… because I love you, Lily. I always have."

"Don't you dare say that to me! Do not presume your word even means shit to me anymore."

"Lily, what would you have had me do? I was falling to pieces. Everything was crumbling around me and you, you looked at me and walked away. You walked away when I need you the most."

"I walked away? I did that? James you very well pushed me."

"You should have known, should have seen."

"What? Seen that mess you've become? James the whole of Britain knows that. There is never a story in the paper without the once famous auror Potter and his fall into the liquor bottle."

He looks at her bitterly, "Did they ever mention how I spent the last year clawing myself out?"

It must have been the look in his eyes that softened her heart. It was the look of a pain, a past, that will haunt him until death…. And then beyond.

She looks at him. Hopeless. "What do you expect me to do? Fall to pieces because James Potter is willing to love me again?"

"It may help," he tries to say in his old easy manor, but the humor, the laugh innate inside of him has fled and she doesn't even realize how much that hurts her still.

And she can't even reply because the haunted look in his eyes takes her breath away.

She can see, she can feel, that he has been to Hell and back again. And a bit of her heart, the part he didn't smash nearly two years before, breaks for him as if time wasn't the only thing that has pushed them apart.

"You very nearly saved my life when I was seventeen, James. My biggest regret is that I couldn't save yours."

"That is one regret you should never harbor, Lily. I was the only one who could have saved me. It took nearly the loss of everything I hold dear, my very self, before I woke up one day and you words rang in my ear." He said.

"_How long are you going to do this to yourself, James? How long are you going to let the war control your life? How many more things do you have to lose before you realize that this person is not who you want to be?"_

It's as if they both hear the echo of her voice in the wind. He can once again hear her pleading with him with all the love and logic inside of her and feel his heart twist when he realized that he didn't know how to love her anymore.

"The thing is, Lily, past all the pain and the alcohol and the final push off the ledge when I finally hit rock bottom, you were the one thing I knew I needed. I knew that the day would come when I would be worth something again, but that can only be possible with you in my life."

"What makes you so sure I am willing to be that person? What makes you think that you can come back here after almost two years and believe that time is standing still waiting for you. It's been two years, James, everything has changed."

"_James, one day you're going to wake up and realize that walking away from me was the biggest mistake of your life."_

Is that how it happened? Did he just open his eyes one morn after a fretful sleep and realize that without her, without Lily, his life was nothing? Could it have been that simple?

Two years have torn their way between them. There is no other way to describe the rift building as she looks into his golden eyes and flinches at the depths of sorrow lying beneath. His eyes once glowed and sparkled and she can feel the shiver of change crawling its way down her spine as she stares into eyes sprinkled with ice.

Each has a lifetime of regrets and neither is past the age of twenty. Time is a fickle foe.

"Life is always changing, Lily. It makes no difference if you're willing to create a few alterations of your own."

"I can't do this, James. Do you not even realize how it was for me when you walked away? You shattered me, James."

"Lily, if I could ever have to courage to make you realize how deeply sorry I am to have caused you pain, but your grievances do not take into account that you were not the only one suffering."

"Oh yes, now we get to that. James, you destroyed yourself and us along with you. And however you rationalize it, whatever pain you were in, there is no harsher reality then that."

He turns away from her, doesn't dare speak as he swallows down a lump in his throat.

"So what? You revile my memory now?" he asks at last. She looks at him.

"Revile you? James, I bloody hate you." She stays quiet for a second before looking at him in the eyes. "You know what I hate about you most. Not that I spent months crying for you and even more time worrying that you were okay. It's after all the bullshit and the tears and the general pain you put me through. After all of that, I still want to be there to see how it all turns out. I still love you!"

She turns away from him after that, walks down the street heading for her house. He stands there, stunned, unable to move until the sound of a loud bird wakes him up. He looks down the road where she walked away and without a second though, he goes after her.

"Lily! Lily stop!" She turns at the sound of his voice. It's only when he reaches her that he sees the tears resting on her cheeks. He wipes them clean.

"I know I messed up, Lily. I know I very well disappeared for two years and left you for no good reason at all. I know you have no reason to trust me or my motives. I know I hurt you," he takes a breath as she look away from him and down at the side walk. "But, I am asking you, begging you to please just give me a second chance. Please."

"I can't, James. I won't." She looks at him with fire in her emerald eyes. "I won't be your girlfriend again."

Something bursts inside of him. Anger that he cannot control.

"I'm not asking you to be my girlfriend again! I'm asking you to forget all the bullshit I've put you through and be my bloody wife!" His cheeks flare red and he stares at her with all the passion he once did at seventeen.

And somewhere inside of her she could have said yes for the alone. Yet, she answers with fury of her own.

"You call that a proposal, James!"

He shakes his head, breathing the anger out of him. "Lily, do not pretend to be angered by it. You were never a girl to want mushy sentiments and flowers on your doorstep. All you wanted was the truth of feelings and I'm offering you that. I'm offering you my eternal love."

She shakes her head at him while trying not to feel astounded that after all this time he still knows her so well.

"You once offered me the world, James, and took it away at the first sign of trouble. How am I supposed to believe that you won't do it again? How can I take you on your word that this time you won't just go crazy and walk away."

"Because, I'm not that person anymore. I…"

But there are no words to describe what he has become. Two years ago he lost the jovial child he once was who prided himself on his fierce loyalty and strength of mind. When that fled, he was left in darkness not knowing how he could live a moment longer. At this moment, looking into her eyes again, he has become the best James he could be. He'll never be that free spirited boy she fell in love with again, yet he now understands the purpose, the need for the loyalty and inner strength he once took for granted. If his sufferings did one good thing, it showed James how to be the leader he once pretended he was in school.

"Can I just say this?" he asks. "I want to be there for it.I want to be there when you cry because you're turning thirty and I want to be the one to tell you that I've never seen you look more beautiful. I want to be there in fifty years and feel your wrinkling and soft hand holding me tight. I want to look at you, fifty years from now, and show you that I have never loved you more. I want to grow old with you."

She looks at him, in slight awe, before she is able to speak.

"See James," she says as a slight tear falls down her cheek. "now_ that_ is a proposal."

A/N: Two more chappies to go. I truly love this one and it was hard, not to write, but to figure out how to do it correctly. I don't know if I did, but I like it.


	8. Chapter 8

Yet, even with those beautiful words that filled her heart that day nearly two months before, she couldn't look into his eyes and say yes. She couldn't promise him her life in matrimony.

He had walked away at her request, and the next morning showed up at her house with a bag of bagels and two wonderfully strong coffees brewed at her old favorite shop.

And if he was surprised when she moved past the doorway to let him in, he was the only one who knew it.

One day, a week after she woke up to find him on her doorstep, she realized that he had slyly wormed his way back into her life. She woke up, saw him lying in the bed next her, and knew their lives were completely intertwined once again. She knew it was only a matter of time before she gave in and became his wife.

It is a mystery even to her why she continues to fight. Why she doesn't just wake up one morning, shake him awake, and just tell him that she is done. That she doesn't want to fight it any longer.

But she has always been so afraid.

When he left her and submitted to the demons plaguing him, she didn't know how to proceed with her life. She did everything she had done the day before, but it was without any conviction, any reason. For so many years James had been this light that had guided her. And it was so sudden, too sudden, when that light died out.

She has heard about the last two years of his life. She heard about that day a year and a half ago when he attended a Ministry Ball and Sirius had to carry him home after he destroyed the Minister's speech about the progress in the war and the courage of the aurors with a sarcastic, drunken outburst. She heard about the day five months later when he stood by his boss', Moody's, desk crying as he begged Moody for the salvation he knew wouldn't come. Crying without his dignity, without his courage as his fellow aurors gathered around Moody's office to listen. And she knew about the day a year ago when he attempted and failed suicide one night while Sirius spent the night on the town.

She was on-call in the hospital when they brought him in, bloody wrists and his face an ashen white. He looked so near death and even as she felt his pulse, so weak that she believed it was only a matter of time, she couldn't allow herself to believe that it could be him lying there. That the breath coming out of his mouth could have been his last.

She walked out of the emergency room, leaving James to the care of another healer, and sat in the lounge staring into a cup of coffee. She'll never know how long she stared for, how much time had passed, but she didn't cry until she walked into his room and saw that he was breathing, lightly, but breathing all the same. She sat by his bed, held his hand as he slept, and didn't move until Sirius walked through James' door.

She walked away as Sirius stepped in, their eyes meeting for a moment of mutual pain, and the next time she saw James he looked fiercely into her eyes and told her he wanted to be with her forever.

And even today, she still cannot muster up the courage to ask him about it, to tell him that she was there suffering with him.

"So what are you going to do with your life now, James?" She asks looking at from her seat by her fireplace.

"I don't know. It's not as if it's too important for me to get a job. My parent's did leave me a fortune."

"Oh yes, the Potter fortune. How could I forget?" She smiles sarcastically and he raises an eyebrow.

"All I'm saying is that my job would be more like a hobby then anything else and… I need to ask you something." He says fingering the pillow on his lap.

"hmmm" she says as she looks back to the flames.

"Did Dumbledore send you a letter recently?" She turns back.

"You… you got it, as well?" He nods unconsciously.

"About a month ago. I've put a lot of thought into it and I think I'm going to do that."

She turns to him, looks into his eyes and then down at the long sleeve shirt she knows he's been wearing for the better part of a year.

"James, do you… do you think that's wise considering… everything?" He nods,

"To be an auror, they teach you how to be a ruthless fighter. They teach you to turn to stone as you look upon your opponents face and end his life before he ends yours. I… I didn't know how to become impervious to it, to lose my soul for the good of the World. I couldn't." He says trying hard to not relive the pain.

"And how is this different? It's still fighting the war, James."

"This is a resistance group, not the muscle of the country. My need to help, it hasn't lessened at all."

"I want so bad to not fear for you anymore, James." She says look down to the carpet.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," she says quietly, "nothing. Just… just hold me, please." He smiles lightly and moves to the floor as he pulls her to him.

"I knew you couldn't resist me," he says smiling against her hair.

"Oh James, just shut up." She says toying with the sleeve of his shirt. She breathes in for a moment, "Do you ever think about it, James?"

"What?" he says quietly.

"That night…when you…" but she stops. He stays quiet for a bit, and she thinks for a moment that he didn't even hear her.

"I think about it everyday," he says so quietly she isn't sure she even heard.

"How… how did you do it? How did you find your courage to… to just move passed that and wake up and know you have the strength to go on?"

"Because no matter what happened, I had to have faith in myself. I had to believe I could learn how to be James Potter again." He says resting his head on her hair.

She smiles. "For someone who spent the better part of the last two years slowly driving himself insane, you seem to have regained your everlasting optimism with alacrity."

Despite himself, he laughs. "I could have stayed the other way. In fact, my dear, there were many girls who came up to me on the street to say how being in despair contributed to my good looks."

"You were a brooding beauty?" she jokes.

"Would you ever have doubted it?" she almost answers no, but then closes her eyes and takes his hand.

"Yes, it's been three or so years and I still can't be completely happy, James. My parent's deaths, I don't know how to move past it."

"You don't. You just learn to live despite it. You learn to be happy despite it."

"I don't know how to live despite it. I don't know how to be completely happy."

"Yes, you do," he says with conviction. "I know you, everything about you. You do."

But even as he says those words, he knows they are only half true. He's had to learn that she no longer likes sugar in her coffee and that she won't touch sugar quills any more when once they had been her favorite candy. He's had to watch the natural curl of her hair as she lets it dry in the English sunlight and has had to get used to the thin black color lining her eyes. He's had to realize that she no longer smiles at him when they wake up in the morning. Instead, she stares into his eyes, reaching out gently as if to see if he is real. If he really is lying beside her.

Each time he is tempted to grab her hand and tell her that yes, yes he is here. And yes, he will never go anywhere again.

But he knows that that isn't what she wants to hear.

"I know you do," she says calmly as she looks toward the fire. "You always have."

He smiles, "Have you spoken to Sirius?"

"Yes, yes I saw him for lunch the other day while you were off doing God knows what."

He chuckles, "I was busy. I'm building a life again, you know." She thinks of something at the mention of Sirius.

"Is it true that… that they put you in St. Mungos?" she asks because even when Sirius wound up at her door almost a year ago to hand her the grave news, she couldn't believe it.

"What? Did you think they would allow me to just wander the streets to prey on the innocent with my insanity," he tries to joke about it in his old light manner, but there is too much truth behind his words, too much pain for it to seem funny at all.

"I… I would think Sirius would have taken care of you instead of locking you away. I would think he…"

"You think he wanted me to go there? Lily, I… I put myself in there. I did it." She turns to him.

"Why… why would you do that, James?"

"Because… because I didn't want to burden Sirius or anyone else and after I tried…" he closes his eyes and breathes, "after I tried to kill myself, I knew I needed the help Sirius or anyone else couldn't give me."

"James, don't you realize that you would never be a burden to him. He loves you, so much. And me, you could… you could have come to me." She says finally, allowing the last few words to leave her mouth slowly as she processes what she is saying.

"Lily, just don't. Please, just don't." he says with more force then he wanted.

"I… I'm sorry, James. That place, though. That place is horrible."

"I saw Alice a bit when I was there," he says.

"Did she work in your ward?" He laughs,

"I think she worked wherever she was needed. But, she visited me daily. I liked that."

"Alice was great in healing school, even if she was a bit ahead of me. I haven't seen her in ages." Lily says getting off James' lap.

"She's married now. She says she would have invited me to the wedding, but seeing as how I was in a mental institution at the time…"

"Married," Lily interrupts. "To who?"

"Frank Longbottom. He's an auror that worked in my department actually. He's great. I still see him from time to time."

"I remember him from Hogwarts." She says getting up and going to the kitchen. "Do you want some tea, James?"

"No," he says staring into the fire, "no, I don't."

She looks over at him, "Are you okay?"

He stands up and walks towards her, "I just don't know, Lily. I don't know what I have to do anymore. What else I have to prove?" He fumbles with his pocket for a moment.

"James," she says, "James I…"

"I bought this for you," he says taking a little black box out of his pocket. "I bought it that day you had lunch with Sirius." She stares but can't say a word.

"I'm… I'm going to ask you one more time. I'll even do it right, Lily. On my knees and all… with a ring." He says.

"James… you…"

"Lily, shut up and let me speak," he says as he gets on one knee. He looks at her and smiles. "I mean, please shut up."

Suddenly, he laughs. "Now, I don't remember what I wanted to say."

She smiles realizing that, possibly she doesn't need to fear him anymore, "You aren't very good at this, are you?"

"Surprisingly no."

"Well, you could just slip the ring on my finger and in ten years, we can tell our kids how badly you botched it…twice."

Because, after everything, she just doesn't want to be without him anymore. Not ever again.

He stands up, a slow smile brightening up his face as he takes her face in his hands and kisses her. Slowly, he slips the rings onto her finger. She stares as the diamonds catch the light.

"I love you, Lily."

"I love you, too."

And he kisses her again.

A/N: I lied in my last authors note. I don't know how many more chapters there will be. 


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: This is actually one of my one shots from I just decided it kind of fit in perfectly with the story and who Lily and James are within it. There are brief changes for it to fit in better, if you've already read it. After this, there will be one or two more chapters. I'm leaning towards one though._

"Do you think he knows who I am?"

She looks at him as they stand side by side in the nursery. Their baby snores in the crib in front of them as the man's arms hold his wife tight.

He chuckles, "I hope he does after a year."

He kisses her cheek, she smiles, and then silence.

Silence of comfort, two people completely in love taking strength from each other as the world around them falls to pieces.

Silence of fear, two people at the heart of conspiracy never knowing what could happen.

They never know what could come next.

"Sometimes, he looks at me and I see it, you know? I see that need he has of me as his mother, but other times he's as transfixed with his toys as he is with my hair."

"Lily," he leans his head into the crook of her neck, "how could you imagine for a moment that this boy doesn't love you?"

A single tear falls that neither notice.

"Because… because after this is over and he grows up and someone else kisses him goodnight, and sings to him, and tells him they love him. After this is over and he looks at someone else and calls _her_ mother, I wonder if he'll ever close his eyes and see me and wonder."

Arms fall as he steps backward. Steps away as if her words were are poison.

And for all they know, her words could be.

"How… How could you say that?"

"James… James I just can't pretend like you. I can't pretend that everything is going to be okay." A whisper, a quiet truth that has none of the hope both desperately need. They're bound together. If her hope dies, his perishes along with it.

"Lily, I don't want to. I don't want to hear anymore of this!"

"James, please, I didn't mean to upset you."

She is the face of serenity even as her insides shake with fear. He walks out of their child's room and she lingers for a moment as she looks once more at her child and thinks that he is so beautiful, so beautiful.

After her parents died, she often wondered how it would feel to know she was going to die.

She imagined herself, old and crippled, waiting in a warm bed with her husband and kids and grandkids all surrounding her.

She imagined an illness that slowly ebbed away at her life until she could no longer hold on.

She imagined being alone in a house, her husband long dead, and going to sleep knowing that tomorrow, she won't wake up.

In all her thoughts she never once imagined it could be like this.

Her sitting in her husbands arms. Her baby playing on the floor in front of them. Her face free of even a single wrinkle.

She is too young.

Once, when she was seventeen, she imagined a tragedy. A car crash, a potion gone awry, a slip and fall down some stairs, or even that terminal disease coming to her forty or fifty years before her time should have been up.

She imagined a beautiful funeral where people would cry silent tears while listening to her eulogy and whisper to themselves that she was so young. They would look at her coffin and shake their heads sadly because it is such a tragedy. Such a tragedy they would repeat as they made their way over to James and hugged him as if that would make all his pain disappear.

And then it would be over.

"James," she calls as she walks out onto the balcony and puts her arms around him leaning her head on the back of his shoulder.

"If you forget who you are, Lily, then you will die and I will die and Harry will grow up knowing neither one of us."

It was a solemn prediction. Something she has thought of before in the darkness of night. A time of night when she allows death to swarm her. She could never be like him, who puts all of his trust in the honor of those he loves most. It took her years to trust him as she does now even as it took him seconds to look at her and know his heart safe within her grasp.

"Maybe I'm embracing it, James. Maybe this is our destiny."

"To die? How is that a destiny?"

"No, James, to be his hero. To sacrifice so our child can live. We aren't who he wants. Maybe we're here to make sure he never gets it."

"Lily, we are safe. No one but Peter and Sirius knows where we are. No one but them. Close your eyes and think of the future. In a year from now, two years from now, this, all of this, will be a crazy joke. A bad past we never speak a word of again but kill me now if I won't live to see his second birthday, his tenth and eleventh and…"

"You know, I never once thought of him growing old." Her voice rings out steady as she feels his body shake.

"What?"

"Well, it's just I never once imagined what he would be like at graduation or his wedding or even his first time at King's Cross. It has always been if his smile will be like yours or if his hair will be soft or just his hand curled inside my own." She says and then stays quiet for a moment.

"James?"

"Hmmm."

"We should stay up all night long."

"What? Lily that's…"

"No James, it isn't. I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to close my eyes. I want… I want to sit in your arms for hours and watch the sun as it begins to rise." A few tears leak from her eyes and he finds the pain of her words transforming into his love for her, his need to please her every desire.

"You're crazy, do you know that? You're bloody insane and it makes me love you so much."

It is as much of a "yes" as she would ever get from him.

His back slides down against the wall. Her body falls in the space between his legs and his arms encircle her, hold her with all the strength he has. She leans her head back on his shoulder.

"I love you," she whispers quietly and he kisses her cheek.

"I love you, too."

They sit there all night waiting, just waiting for the inevitable beauty of the sun to rise. Hours later, her eyelids fall over her eyes and she sleeps. His fall moments afterward. An hour later the sun rises.

_Wake up, it's Halloween_.


	10. Chapter 10

Most people will know of what happened next. The stillness, the fear of something coming that they couldn't understand was with them all night until the Dark Lord's chilling footsteps could be heard outside. James, brave, honorable James, wasted no time in trying to save his family. He wasted no time in telling his wife to go upstairs and save the only thing that mattered to either of them. And Lily, Lily didn't have to be told twice before she raced up the stairs and clutched baby Harry to the security of her chest.

The door burst open, the house filled with the screams of curses being thrown and the cries of little Harry, who was unable to comprehend that his world was about to end. Lily, crying the whole time, kissed his delicate head and whispered sweet nothings in his ear that she didn't stop, not even when she knew her husband lay dead and the Dark Lord was coming to take Harry next.

Saving Harry was all that ever mattered. And where James so valiantly failed, Lily… Lily succeeded.

The Dark Lord fell, baby Harry survived, and the world rejoiced through the next few days for this baby Hero. The entire Wizarding World rejoiced at his life, and few, only those close enough to feel what their sacrifice had cost them, mourned for Lily and James.

Yet their sacrifice would never be forgotten.

The years passed swiftly. Babies were born, the leaves on tress fell during Autumn, and flowers bloomed with the coming of Spring. Harry grew up, a boy with shining emerald eyes that in the future would make wizards shiver at the remembrance of his mother's stare. He grew up, knowing only their names, knowing only that since he was a baby, he was the unwanted child, a cipher in his own home.

He would never know much about them, even after magic came into his life and showed him a world he once dreamt of when he was a little boy. He would never know he had James' valor or Lily's caution and that his smile was all Lily and his laugh all James. He would never look into a mirror and see James staring back nor would he envision wisps of red hair and wonder about his mother.

His parents will always be a fantasy to him, fictional characters who he would love until the day he died. They would be Harry's dream of what could have been, the life he had been denied when he was only a year old.

With their deaths, he became a symbol to the world. He was less of a boy and more of a legend before he was able to speak. And now, fifteen years after his parents' died, it will be time for him to live up to that pedestal, to be the hero he was thought to be his entire life.

And even now, with the very same evil that killed his parents brewing around him, he can still find time to look into her eyes and be a kid in love for the first time.

"Harry, look, I think it's Dumbledore." She says looking at him from her spot on the grass. He moves his hands under his head and looks to where she is pointing.

The grass tickles his arms but he ignores it,

"Dumbledore? Ginny, it is plainly Professor Snape. Look, there is even a flacon hat on top of the head." He laughs as she rolls her eyes.

"You dolt, that is clearly Dumbledore's hat. You know, the tall one that looks like an ice cream cone."

He smiles and looks at her, "We could fight about this all day, or we could…" he trails of and sneaks a look at the Great Hall doors.

"What?" she asks.

"I'm weighing options. You see on one hand, I'm about to roll on top of you and kiss you until you are breathless, yet, I cannot get the thought out of my mind that once I do something truly horrendous will come out of those doors."

"Like what?" she asks laughing as she tussles his hair.

"Well," he says moving onto his stomach and propping his elbows up. He looks at her through his eye lashes, "Mostly, just Ron"

She rolls her eyes, "My big brother was not blessed with the best temper, nor the best brain to go with it."

"Only where you and blokes are concerned, and I don't care if he does call me his best friend, he wouldn't hesitate to kill me if he saw me snogging his sweet, little sister on the Hogwart's lawn." She shakes her head,

"I cannot believe you would think about kissing me and then only think about Ron."

He looks at her and smiles, a smile that has nothing of his mother in it, but all the mischief of a Marauder. He looks to her, over to the door, and back to her.

"Oh bullocks," he says as he gets closer to her, "I can take Ron."

And she leans up and kisses him, forgetting the slowly coming threat of war, the brother who is likely to break Harry's nose if he sees this, and even that small knot in her stomach telling her that all this could be over in a heart beat.

She kisses him, and they both know moments like this are as close to perfection as either one will know. When they part, she looks at him, straightening his glasses on his face.

"Harry?" she asks as they both sit up and clean the leaves out of their hair.

"Hmmm," he says as he reaches over to get some of the grass tangled in her red locks.

"Do you think your parents ever did this when they were at Hogwarts?" She asks as the Spring sun filters through her eyelashes and into her eyes. He looks at her at the question not hiding his surprise that she, of all people, would speak to him plainly of his parents.

And what surprised him even more was that with her, with Ginny, he was willing to speak of them all day. But thinking of that image, his parents sixteen and lying down on this exact spot, he remains quiet.

"I…" he begins after a bit, "I can hardly imagine my parents doing something so frivolous." He smiles at her slightly before running his hand through her hair. "I don't think I could imagine them cloud gazing at all," he says and she takes his face in her hands and kisses him, and this time not even Ron would be able to break them apart.

When he imagines his parents, it's always as if they are warriors for the light, fighting evil until the death. Bold and fearless, fighting for his life without a second thought to their own well-being. Those aren't parents who fall onto a bed of grass and stare aimlessly at the sky for hours on end. Those aren't parents who lust after the childish simplicity of life even after they are grown.

Yet, how little they know of his parents. How little they know of life.

End

A/N: Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it 


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